TechTalks at Zalando Technology

by Ralf Heyde - 5 Apr 2013

Here at Zalando Technology, "TechTalks" (Technology Talk) are weekly get-
togethers in which one or two of us present on a subject we’re passionate
about to an audience of technologically curious minds. Typically, TechTalks
take up to 45 minutes, which leaves enough room for a stimulating discussion
at the end. The speaker is not forced to talk for 45 minutes – it’s even ok if
(s)he just talks about some fancy stuff for 15 minutes.

Who participates?

Every employee from the technology team is invited to participate either as speaker or listener!

To be a speaker, just propose a subject to us and we’ll schedule your
presentation. Your TechTalk will take place at least three weeks from the time
it was scheduled – so you’ll have enough time to prepare - if necessary. We’ll
come up with an abstract to make sure your listeners get the message. We also
sometimes invite outside guests, from other areas within Zalando or external
technical experts.

Why are they so important?

We at Zalando develop all of our software components ourselves. That creates a growing diversity of
software running on our platform. Due to Zalando’s spectacular success and
rapid expansion, our technology team continues to grow. Similarly, our
software components get increasingly complex – especially because of the
different conditions in the 14 countries in which we operate.

As a result, it has become easier to lose track of what cool projects other
teams are working on and what new technologies our colleagues are using to
solve problems efficiently.

What’s their goal?

The TechTalk is half training session and half discussion platform. How can we
use one another’s technological approaches to solve problems more effectively?
Our TechTalks allow us to gain insight into the development processes of our
colleagues and into how they solved a specific problem. Some of us may adapt a
colleague’s solution to tackle similar problems we’re facing.

Thus, the main idea behind our TechTalks is twofold: (1) to provide every
participant with a fresh point of view and (2) to trigger discussions about
the technological challenges we’re facing as we’re growing, thereby leading to
possible solutions.

5 of our Recent TechTalks

Hadoop: I gave the audience an overview about the technology Hadoop. This technology is used for massive data processing in analysis and storage. We learned that we can scale dividable problems using a Hadoop cluster.

Dealing with Mutable Objects: Sean talked about the mutability and immutability of objects in the source code/runtime and why some approaches are evil in a software development process.

Marketing: Christian, Zalando’s Chief Marketing Officer, explained to us how Zalando’s skillful marketing machine operates. He discussed our advanced marketing strategies in the online and offline spheres. He also provided us with some insight on how exactly our marketing budget is spent.

Kanban for Software Development: Tobias explained to us how Toyota’s Kanban method can be applied to software development. For instance, he showed us how Kanban can accurately detect and eliminate bottlenecks as well as improve inter- and intra-team communication.

Fraud Prevention: Robert, the team lead of Fraud Prevention at Zalando, shed light on exactly how his team detects fraud. This topic was very interesting for many of our developers, because they need to think about eliminating fraud when implementing new features.